Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Office System MVP Chester Coronel from the Philippines, as part of the MVP Award Program Blog's Series, "10 Days for Office 2010."
A typical day for me is not that different from your typical day. It starts at home when I wake my computer from sleep to check on my personal and work email accounts and try to sort out the things that I need to accomplish for that day. I eat breakfast and then prepare myself to go to work. I arrive at the office and then from there anything goes – I cross out items on my task list, attend meetings, join conference calls, prepare reports, prepare slides for customer presentation, and reply to email messages. Once the day is over, I head home to do some last minute checking on my work email. In a typical day, I use Office 2010 to accomplish many personal and work-related tasks; it has been a great productivity companion for me.
I want to share with you some of the small things that are in Microsoft Office that help me save time and be more productive on a typical day.
How the document looks and what it contains is important to me. Sometimes I spend a more time working on the layout and formatting of the document than I do working on the content. In the past, if I wanted to create a text that has gradient fill and reflection I had to use image editing software. This can take a lot of time. In the new version of Microsoft Word, I can select the text, change the font color to gradient, and apply text effects in just a few clicks. I can even create a style out of it so that I can apply it to other text in the document to create a consistent look.
Word now has new picture editing tools, such as the ability to add background and artistic effects. Performing basic image editing tasks has never been this fast and easy. This really saves me a lot of time which I can use to do other things.
I am an avid user of Microsoft Outlook. When I got my hands on the latest version of Microsoft Outlook, I discovered a new feature called Quick Steps where you can do a set of actions with a click of a mouse button – no need to go through each action one by one.
I commit a lot of mistakes when printing worksheets in Excel. I think the most common mistake that I make is when the last column goes to a separate page. The nicest feature in Office 2010 is the new print preview. In print preview print settings are now integrated into print preview, so you can make changes in page orientation, margins, and scaling. This will save you a lot of time and paper when printing.
These are just some of the many things that Office 2010 can do to help me accomplish things at home and at work. While these may be small things, they can really save you time. I hope that you too will benefit from the new tools and features of Microsoft Office 2010.